Catapult Makes Offshore Wind Data Available

The Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult has launched a new open-access service offering a series of data sets from the 7MW Levenmouth Demonstration Turbine in Fife, as well as the turbine’s met mast and electrical substation.

The Platform for Operational Data (POD) service is designed to improve understanding of how offshore wind farms operate in real-world conditions and support research, projects and product development.

It is hoped to expand the service in future to include data from other demonstrator sites in the UK and beyond to create a unique asset of operational data for research and development.

Access to data from offshore operational assets is critical to developing, demonstrating and validating new analytical models and methodologies being developed by suppliers, SMEs and researchers. However, accessing real data from renewable assets can be notoriously difficult and is often a major barrier to product development. POD has been developed to address this barrier and support the development of ideas, products and services.

Data sets available include time series from turbine SCADA, turbine alarms and events, met mast (on and offshore) and grid/substation information. Industry large and small, academics and researchers can use the data to test and validate data-driven models, methodologies and analyses.

“Big data and digitalisation is transforming our understanding of how wind farms work, and therefore our approach to building, operating and maintaining them,” Chris Hill, ORE Catapult’s Operational Performance Director, said.

“Existing Catapult services such as SPARTA and WEBS offer unparalleled benchmarking opportunities for companies to understand how their assets are performing relative to the industry standard. But our new POD service is the first to offer, for a nominal charge, open access data sets from operational offshore renewable assets for the benefit of the wider industry, academic and research communities.”